Richard Bell

For Performa 15, Richard Bell restages and pays homage to the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, the world’s longest running ongoing protest that was assembled by activists on the lawn of Australia’s Parliament House in 1972, where it remains to this day.

Initiated by artists, actors and activists from the National Black Theatre movement in Redfern, Sydney, The Aboriginal Tent Embassy is a confluence of art and activism and a platform to bring topics of Indigenous health, housing, and land rights to the forefront of Australian politics. Bell’s reimagined Embassy gives a global voice to this cause, functioning as a hub for film screenings, workshops, discussions and as an exhibition space. In this iteration, Embassy presents a program of talks that explore the historic and contemporary relationship between performance and protest with contributions from Black and American, Canadian, and Australian First Nation artists and activists. Embassy will include Vernon Ah Kee’s four-channel video installation tallman (2010), a raw examination of race relations in Australia; and a series of participatory Anger Workshops staged by artist Stuart Ringholt that address trauma and healing. Working in collaboration with former Black Panther member Emory Douglas, Bell has produced a series of promotional ephemera to accompany Embassy, serving among the material that will live on beyond the event in the spirit of the first.

Schedule

Wednesday, 4 November

6:00 - 7:30pm
Screening of The Redfern Story with an introduction by Darlene Johnson

4:15 - 5:00pm
What is the future of solidarity? Public meeting between artists Emory Douglas, Richard Bell, Alan Michelson, Vernon Ah Kee, and Stuart Ringholt, activists Sylvia McAdam from Idle No More and Autumn Marie of Black Lives Matter and many other initiatives, amongst other activists and thinkers.

Credits

Co-produced by Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane.

The IMA is supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland, and from the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council for the Arts, and through the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian Federal, State, and Territory Governments. The IMA is a member of Contemporary Art Organisations Australia (CAOs).

This project is made possible with the support of Australia Council for the Arts, Arts Queensland, and the Milani Gallery.

More about this artist

Related

Aboriginal artist and activist Richard Bell and former Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party and artist Emory Douglas discuss their myriad collaborations, from sign painting to murals, and their global projects of solidarity and activism.

As part of Richard Bell’s Embassy for Performa 15, Stuart Ringholt presents Anger Workshops, a work in the form of a group-therapy session where participants are invited to express their anger with, then their love for, each other.